> But even with the attractive rail-based transit available, Bubba
> will not get his fat ass of the car and strat riding the train.
The task, as I see it, is not to get any particular person out of their car; rather, it is to provide alternatives so that those who want to get out of their car can do so without making The Supreme Sacrafice.
> So it is easy to see that Bubba will look at the transit
> alternative only if the marginal cost of driving (gasoline plus
> tolls) will substantially exceed the transit fare, for a small
> difference will not be worth moving his fat ass to the nearest
> subway station.
There are drivers who make these kinds of decisions. But far more are just stuck. There is no cost-benefit analysis to be done, there is only the car and a place to go. There are children to be dropped off and picked up, there is a job in a far off corner of the city.
Besides: You don't have to get rid of cars to have successful transit; you don't have to get every last car off the road. I hate to use NYC as the example, but with great transit that plenty of people use (more people fare-jump the NY Subway than *ride* BART in the Bay Area, though NY has only a small percentage more people), there is still enormous grid-lock mid-town and on the bridges each day. And Bubba pays $25/day to park in Rockafeller Center. And that's probably just fine. But:
> Now, to tip that balance in favor of the public transit, one needs
> a big stick, and whack the car users with tolls and surchargers.
You've lumped everyone into one big pot. I think that's naive, short-sighted, and just plain wrong. Big stick may be beneficial much much later, once an effective alternative is in place. But to do so without your carrot risks undoing progressive taxation.
> In addtion, if the toll booth traffic jams will be inconvenient
> enough, fatheads will certainly re-consider taking their fat
> asses to a more effcient transit alternative.
Sorry, but this doesn't work. All it does is cost society through lost productivity, more pollution, and side effects such as road rage. Ultimately, if *everyone* waits an additional 30 minutes to cross a bridge, it's no longer an individual inconvenience; rather, it's just like the weather: it takes away productivity and no one can really bitch about it or whether it is convenient.
Fathead Bubba won't lose his job because of heavy traffic.
> To my knowledge most politicians (and large employers as well)
> in the region would love to built an efficient rail system to
> solve their traffic problems (ulness that changed in the past few
> years). At fault are suburban fat heads south of Sand Francisco
> (San Mateo county) who said NO to BART extension to prevent the
> dark-skinned folks moving to their neighborhoods.
This is such baloney, you must have missed the fact that the city of San Francisco (a city only twice as large land-wise as the island of Manhattan) has no fewer than *6* completely disconnected transit authorities. It's almost as though someone paid them to make sure you can't connect from BART to CalTrain, from MUNI to the Ferry, from BART to the bus station (what bus station you ask? The one they are going to tear down and not replace!?!). Give us all a break.
Besides: BART is no panacea; it is not a subway. It is more like the LIRR than the BMT. Blaming only San Mateo county is nuts. The biggest beneficiary of bringing BART to SFO (in San Mateo County) will be San Mateo County residents who work at the airport (the airport is the county's largest employer); who has effectively kept BART out of SFO for 20 years? That's right, the SF Taxicab Lobby!
> Whacking those assholes with tolls is not just sound
> policy, but a sweet revenege.
Again you've missed that those people don't pay tolls! The peninsula crowd goes to San Jose or to SF on their commute, in neither case do they take a bridge! Instead, the demographic of toll payers in the Bay Area is far more working class than not. In fact, it's often precisely the 'fatheads' who work in the downtown law firms and financial houses who are the lucky few who get to ride BART, because it goes right to their office from their safe Walnut Creek planned community.
Admit it: you're just wrong.
/jordan